So now it’s official – the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign of the past 5 years
was, after all, about Israel not hatred of Jews
Only yesterday I posted
a blog ‘For 6 years Black Lives Matter Were Attacked as ‘anti-Semites’ by the
Zionists – Today they suffer from amnesia’.
I described how Israel was training
thousands of US Police in repression techniques, including the knee on the
neck.
Today Starmer sacked Rebecca
Long-Bailey from the Shadow Cabinet for retweeting Maxine Peake who pointed out
this elementary fact.
Please sign
and share the Petition we have set up calling for Starmer to go.He is unfit to be Leader of the Labour Party.We cannot have a racist and imperialist at
the head of a party that claims to be socialist.
We should be grateful to Starmer. He
has clarified the situation. As we always said, the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ smear
campaign was always about Israel and never about genine anti-Semitism, i.e.
hatred or hostility to Jews as Jews.
Corbyn stupidly accepted that the 'antisemitism' campaign to remove him was legitimate
It is unfortunate that Jeremy Corbyn and
John McDonnell gave legs to the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign, whose sole
purpose was his removal as Leader by admitting
that Labour ‘had a problem’ with anti-Semitism.
It enabled malicious Zionists like
Margaret Hodge to then claim that if you denied Labour was anti-Semitic then
you were ‘part
of the problem’.
Naturally the Board
of Deputies and the Jewish
Labour Movement welcomed Starmer’s actions because both these bodies are
first and foremost Zionist groups, committed to defend the apartheid Israel.
Jon Lansman didn’t
condemn Starmer’s actions. It was all ‘a big mistake’.
Lansman pleaded that
‘Sir Keir was elected to end factionalism...and I think he's made it
harder for himself to unite the party."
Starmer
was elected to root out the left in the party. Even more pathetically Lansman
went on to explain that
‘Rebecca Long-Bailey
is just as committed to ending anti-Semitism within the party "as he and I
are."
Instead of defending her tweet RLB dissociated herself from Maxine Peake's comments on Israel
Lansman
and Momentum have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. They still don’t get
it.This
isn’t and never was about anti-Semitism. It was always about support for the
world’s only Apartheid State.It was
about support for imperialism and bipartisanship in foreign policy with the
Tories, which Israel symbolises.
Israel's finest use the knee-on-neck as a matter of routine
That
is why all Momentum can do is to call for the reinstatement of RLB. We do not
care about her.She is a weak individual
who signed up to the very ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign that has caused her sacking.
She calls herself a Zionist. She supported
the expulsion of Chris Williamson. She is a victim of her own stupidity.
What matters
is that a simple statement of fact that Israel trains thousands of US Police in
the techniques of repression has been branded an anti-Semitic conspiracy
theory.
By his action Starmer is now signed
up, 100%, behind Israel’s military repression of the Palestinians. He is unfit
to be Labour leader.
It is a fact
that Israel trains the United States Police in repressive techniques to use
against Black people. The major US Zionist group, the Anti-Defamation League boasted that
Over the past decade, we have trained 150,000 law
enforcement personnel—at no cost to taxpayers. This work is designed to
protect people and communities from hate, extremism and terrorism.
Well we saw
what ‘protection’ of people from terrorism
meant when 5 days after George Floyd was murdered, Israel’s notorious Border
Police gunned
down Iyad Hallak, a 32 year old autistic Palestinian in East Jerusalem. They
had ‘mistaken’ his mobile phone for a gun. A mistake they never make in the
case of Jews.
The details
of Iyad’s murder are gruesome. According
to Ha’aretz, an already wounded Iyad took shelter in a garbage hut.His carer screamed that he was autistic.He cried 'I'm
With Her,' ‘The Cop Opened Fire
Anyway’ and pumped the final 3 of 7 bullets into his body. Unlike in
Minneapolis no police have been arrested, still less charged.The police killers are still employed. There
is an investigation but like all such Israeli police investigations it will go
nowhere.
This is what Sir Keir Starmer is defending, just as
he defended
the murder of Ian Tomlinson by the Metropolitan Police until public pressure
forced him to back down.
Starmer sacked Rebecca
Long-Bailey for supporting an ‘anti-Semitic
conspiracy theory’. By definition an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory such as
the belief that Jews are controlling the world, is untrue and has no basis in
fact.If it is true they it can’t be anti-Semitic.
Unless Starmer is saying that anti-Semitism is based
on fact. If so it is Starmer who is the anti-Semite.
Historically Zionism has
always justified anti-Semitism by saying that Jews in the diaspora brought
their problems on themselves by not having their own country. As Israel’s first
Justice Minister Pinhas Rosen said‘Palestine is an institute for the
fumigation of Jewish vermin’.
You can find this quote
and many similar ones in Joachim Doron’s Classic
Zionism and modern anti-Semitism: parallels and influences’(1883-1914),in Studies
in Zionism 8, Autumn 1983 and the Journal of Israeli history No. 4.
Fundamental
to Zionist anti-Semitism towards Jews outside Israel is the foundational principle
called the Negation
of the Diaspora. It is still common amongst Zionists. When Zionism first
arose it was seen by most Jews as a form of Jewish anti-Semitism.Both the anti-Semites and the Zionists said
that Jews were a separate nation who shouldn’t live amongst non-Jews.
Do the Israeli Police train
Americas Police forces in the Knee on the Neck Hold?
According
to Amnesty International, hundreds of US law enforcement
officials have gone through training in Israel, while thousands more
have been trained by Israeli forces in the United States.
Middle East
Eye has documented the
similarities between the militarised tactics of US police forces and Israeli
police against Palestinian protesters. The use of this form of restraint is
very common to Israeli police as this video
of its use against a Jewish American protesting at the march of the far-Right
in Jerusalem demonstrates.
Neta Golan,
of the International Solidarity Movement said:
“When I saw the picture of killer cop Derek Chauvin
murdering George Floyd by leaning in on his neck with his knee I remembered
noticing when many Israeli soldiers began using this technique when we were
protesting in the West Bank sometime in 2006.
Israel
pioneered the knee-on-neck hold that killed George Floyd. It is not an
anti-Semitic conspiracy theory to say so. It
is true.
Starmer is a Racist Hypocrite
Barely two
weeks ago Starmer ‘took
the knee’ in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. This was an empty and meaningless
gesture. He issued a video
statement quoting Martin Luther King that ‘injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere.’ Starmer even expressed his support for BLM.
In 2016 BLM
called Israel an Apartheid and genocidal state and supported BDS.For this they were criticised as
anti-Semitic by Zionist groups. Starmer is echoing this criticism of BLM.
Clearly injustice
to the Palestinians does not feature on Starmer’s horizon. That is why this
pompous starched-white representative of the British Establishment needs to
go.He is a racist supporter of Israeli settler
colonialism.
Starmer and Rayner take the knee to BLM whilst supporting similar tactics by Israeli Police
In April
2018 Black Lives Matter forced Starbucks
into excluding the Anti-Defamation League from training their staff following
the arrest of 2 Black men for ‘loitering’ at a Philadelphia coffee house.
Starmer has
just demonstrated that Labour is a pro-imperialist pro-Zionist party.That is why he must go.
Since BLM describe Israel as a Genocidal Apartheid State and Support BDS – is Starmer is going to expel
them for ‘anti-Semitism’?
When I saw ‘Sir’ Keir, the pin-up of George Osborne and the British
Establishment take the knee I could not help but
smell the sulphurous stench of hypocrisy. Black Lives Matter are, according to
the IHRA and the 10 Commandmentsanti-Semitic.
By supporting BDS they single out
Israel from all other countries. In addition they call it a genocidal,
apartheid state. Starmer should be giving BLM the boot not offering them his
carefully tailored knee.
The Telegraph, in what even for it
was a particularly stupid and bizarre article Why Black Lives Matter protests
are a catalyst for anti-Semitism argued that ‘extreme anti-racism’ causes anti-Semitism. This is where the fake
anti-Semitism campaign leads. Anti-racism equals anti-Semitism. Classic double
think.
Leaving to one side whether you can
have ‘extreme’ as opposed to ‘moderate’ anti-Semitism, what it is saying is
that its definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ (anti-Zionism) is a form of anti-racism!
I agree but that’s why it’s not anti-Semitism!
Israel's policy towards Black refugees is worse even than that of Donald Trump
Please Spare a Thought for
the Zionists’ Dilemma!
It’s not often that I ask readers of
this blog to put themselves in the shoes of the Zionists. However I am going to
ask you to make the effort in the case of BLM. I am asking you to empathise
with them. As Ali Abunimah says
‘Israel lobby
groups have long seen the Black Lives Matter movement as a threat and have
tried both to disrupt and co-opt it.’
In 2018, Al Jazeera’s leaked
undercover documentary The Lobby–USA revealed how the Israeli
government and its lobby worked
to disrupt the BLM movement. Undercover footage showed an Israeli official
complaining about the BLM “problem.”
It also revealed how The Israel
Project, a now defunct
organization, pulled strings behind the scenes to get a BLM fundraiser in a New
York City nightclub cancelled.
Britain's Zionists attacking BLM as 'anti-semitic'
The problem that the Zionists face
is how to deal with the threat that BLM represents. For some Zionists BLM should
be confronted head on. However those Zionists who are not head bangers realise
that if they do this, whilst they may win the plaudits of the White
Supermacists they will lose the majority of Jewish youth and the Democratic
Party. They are caught on the horns of a dilemma and it is interesting to see
how they are wriggling!
For
nearly 6 years all wings of the
Zionist movement criticised and attacked BLM. Liberal Zionists said that they
supported the demands of BLM but they were pained by their description of
Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, as a genocidal, Apartheid state.
Sure
Israel provided training in the latest techniques of repression for most US police
forces. And yes it’s true that the neck hold is an Israeli invention. However
they wish that BLM wouldn’t involve itself in international matters and confine
itself to the United States.
The hypocrisy of AIPAC knows no bounds
Aipac, ADL and Police Training
Right-wing
Zionists never liked BLM, regardless of its attitude to Israel. Zionism and
anti-racism made strange bedfellows to the Zionist
Organisation of America and its Chairman Mort Klein.
Even AIPAC, the pro-Republican Israel
lobby group must have found it painful to have to condemn George
Floyd’s murder writing that:
On the eve of
George Floyd’s funeral, we join with millions of Americans who continue to
mourn his murder. His death is a shattering reminder of the injustice &
inequities that Black Americans still endure in our society. The scourge of
racism, intolerance & inequality must end.
Palestinians identify with George Floyd
Of course if George Floyd had been
a Palestinian then AIPAC would have been calling him a ‘terrorist’.
Naturally Sussex Friends of Israel, which was
founded by Fiona Sharpe of Labour Against
Anti-Semitism,attacked
BLM as ‘anti-Semitic’. To SFI any form of anti-racism is ‘anti-Semitism’.
Sussex Friends of Israel, of which former Brighton Councillors Emma Daniels and Julie Cattell and ex-leader Cllr. Daniel Yates are members calls BLM 'antisemitic'
Between
5 and 13 September 2015 the ADL held
a National Counter-Terrorism Seminar in Israel. ADL plays a key role in the
relationship between Israeli and US police whilst, at the same time, decrying
police violence in the US. No one is suggesting that US police racism is a consequence
of this training, but the fact that ADL is involved in training and refining
their techniques of oppression, should give the lie to the ADL’s profession of
support to the Black struggle.
The purest hypocrisy - ADL was training the killers
The Militarisation of the United States Police
In August
2018 Jewish Voice for Peace determined
that three years previously Peter Edge, who was promoted to Acting Deputy
Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under President
Trump, attended a training in Israel, as part of the Anti-Defamation
League’s 2015 National Counter Terrorism Institute Seminar. ICE are the
thugs who deport and brutalise migrant families and children.
An article The
US-Israel Military Relationship and the US-Mexico Border revealed that
Homeland Security Director Kirjsten
Nielsen’s recent trip to Israel included a visit to the “hi-tech” fences
blockading Gaza. Israeli Security Minister Gilad Erdan ‘reckons’ that some of what Nielson saw and learned in Israel “will certainly be implemented in what the
United States is setting up on its border with Mexico.”
“good for the heart of the nation in a certain way,
because people want protection, and a wall protects. All you’ve got to do is
ask Israel. They were having a total disaster coming across, and they had a
wall. It’s 99.9 percent stoppage.
‘Jewish
voices from across the U.S. political spectrum came out in opposition to the platform of the
Movement for Black Lives, which claimed that U.S. military aid to Israel
makes the U.S. complicit in “the genocide taking place against the Palestinian
people.” Many progressive Jewish organizations denounced only this section and
endorsed the rest of the platform, calling for an end to mass incarceration,
demilitarization of the police, etc.
However other, more conservative Zionists, used this
as an excuse to ‘distance
themselves from Black Lives Matter as a whole.’ The description of
Israel as an Apartheid state proved BLM was ‘a
threat to the assimilation of Jews into undifferentiated American whiteness.’
This debate took on a heightened form with the current
upsurge in BLM over the murder of George Floyd. It was clear to all except the atavistic
Zionist Organisation of America that they were facing a mass movement of
millions. It was simply not possible for the Zionists, much as they wanted to,
to attack BLM as ‘anti-Semitic’.
Thousands of young Jewish kids, who are already skeptical
towards an Israel that is admired
by white supremacists and anti-Semites identify with BLM. They realize that the
racism that lay behind Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd is the same racism
that led to the murder
of 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.
Dianne Lob
Zionist Organisation of America and HIAS
It was only two months ago that the ZOA objected
vehemently to nomination of Dianne Lob, as the next Chair of the Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations [CPMAJO]. Why? Because she
was a past Chair of the Hebrew Immigrant Advisory Society.
‘ZOA charged that HIAS was part of an “unholy
consortium of Jewish and anti-Israel groups” fighting Trump’s immigration
policies.’
Historically HIAS provided support for Jewish refugees from Europe but
today Jews are not refugees. So it is mainly Black and Muslim people who receive
its aid. In the eyes of ZOA that is a crime.
Anti-Muslim Bigot Frank Gaffney piles in against Lob
Dianne Lob is as committed a Zionist as the rest of the 50 strong
Committee. She described
herself
“as someone deeply devoted to Jewish values
and to the importance of safeguarding the special U.S.-Israel relationship”.
What the Zionist right mean when they called her ‘anti-Zionist’ is anyone who is that she isn’t a 100% racist. Lob
is a corporate Democrat and head of global business development for
international investment management firm AllianceBernstein.
The objections of the ZOA were partly
successful. Instead of taking over as Chair at the beginning of June 2020,
she will have to wait until April 2021. Even this compromise was only agreed
after a 31-8 vote with 5 abstentions. As the Times of Israel reported
‘Leading the charge was Morton Klein’s Zionist
Organization of America, which has strongly opposed efforts to resettle Muslim
refugees from Arab countries in the United States and Europe — something that
has topped the HIAS agenda in recent years because of unrest in the Muslim
world.
In other words the objections were based on pure racism.
The ZOA is the oldest
Zionist organisation in America, being founded in 1897, the year of the first
Zionist Congress. It is funded by Trump backer, Sheldon Adelson and fiercely
supports his White Supremacist agenda.
The ZOA is proving embarrassing to the more astute Zionists
The target of HIAS is interesting itself. Robert
Bowers, the fascist who murdered worshippers
at the Tree of Life synagogue was obsessed
with HIAS and the supposed role of Jews in bringing immigrants into the USA.
This was at the time of the Congressional elections and Trump was lambasting
the refugee caravan in Central America and threatening to set the military on
them.
Bowers subscribed to the far-right theme that ‘the
Jews’ were working to subvert the White nations by welcoming Black people into
their country. That is what lay behind the slogan of Trump’s ‘fine people’ at
Charlottesville who chanted
‘the Jews will not replace us’.
The Tree of Life was a liberal synagogue that had agreed
to help fundraise for HIAS. Like the majority of American Jews they were the
most liberal section of the White population (unlike Britain where Jews are the
most reactionary section!).
This enraged Bowers. He posted
on social media, just hours before opening fire that:
‘“HIAS likes to
bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get
slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
Two
and a half weeks earlier, he had written,
“Why hello there HIAS!
You like to bring in hostile invaders to dwell among us?”
Another
post read,
“Open you Eyes! It’s the
filthy EVIL jews Bringing the Filthy EVIL
Muslims into the Country!!”
BLM is a racist, Soros funded organisation - and the ZOA dares to say its BLM which is antisemitic!
The Zionist Organisation of America
If the CPMAJO had any morals or scruples then the ZOA and its racist
supporters would have been kicked out years ago.
The ZOA, like most Zionist groups, love to accuse anti-Zionists of ‘anti-Semitism’ and even liberal Zionists
of the same sin. The reality however is that they are guilty of what they
accuse others of.
In 2016, after Trump’s election who did they invite
as a guest of honour to address their annual Gala dinner? None other than Steve
Bannon, who was Trump’s Strategic Advisor. The same Bannon whose wife testified
in their 2007 divorce that
‘the biggest problem he had
with Archer [an elite private school for girls] is the number of Jews that
attend.’
Bannon did a no show
because of a large demonstration by Jewish groups, IfnotNow and Jewish Voice
for Peace.
Hungarian neo-Nazi Sebastian Gorka was guest of honour at the ZOA's 2017 Gala Dinner - seen wearing the Vitezi Rend medal
The ZOA invited
him again in 2017 and this time they also invited
Sebastian Gorka, a fully paid–up fascist nut. At Trump’s inauguration ball he
decided to wear
the Vitezi Rend, a medal issued by the Hungarian Order of Heroes, which
collaborated with Hungary’s Nazi government during the World War II.
Up till now the ZOA has been a member of the CPMAJO. Their anti-Muslim
bigotry, their dalliance with anti-Semites, their love of Trump and their
mutual hostility to HIAS, were of no consequence.
Yet when the ZOA decided to attack Black Lives Matter there were loud
calls for their removal. The Jerusalem Post reported
that
Progressive Jewish groups have accused Morton Klein,
president of the Zionist Organization of America of 'bigotry' and 'hatred' for
his opposition of Black Lives Matter.
Steve Bannon - ex-Trump advisor and ex-Editor Breitbart
The
statement was issued by the New Israel Fund and other ‘liberal’ Zionists. Why now? According to their statement:
“The continued presence of Klein and the ZOA in
important umbrella groups is an affront to Jews of color and all people of
color, and to the overwhelming majority of all American Jews. It undermines any pro-Israel, pro-peace
advocacy and damages the collective reputation of our community.” (my
emphasis)
The Murder of Iyad Hallak
The clue
lies in the last sentence. These hypocrites, who have never once spoken out
about Zionist racism, Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians or even the murder
5 days after George Floyd of Iyad Hallak, an autistic Palestinian, are worried
that a full frontal attack by Zionists on BLM will backfire and undermine their
‘pro-Israel, pro-peace advocacy’.
Sebastian Gorka - the ZOA's neo-Nazi dinner guest
If there
was even an ounce of sincerity amongst these liberal Zionists then they would have
condemned the murder of Iyad. Already wounded, trapped in a garbage hut and with
his carer screaming
that he was autistic they pumped the final 3 bullets into his body.
Unlike in
Minneapolis no Policemen have been arrested, still less charged. There is an
‘investigation’ but Israeli police investigations never result in charges of
murder. Netanyahu could not even bring himself to condemn the murder because Israel’s
finest thought they were dealing with a ‘terrorist’ and since Iyad was a
Palestinian they had every right to think that.
Unbelievably the ZOA deals in the same tropes about Soros as the Jewish financial puppet master as America's neo-Nazis
Mort
Klein’s offence is to say
what Zionist liberals believe but won’t say openly, namely that Black Lives
Matter
is a Jew hating, White hating, Israel hating,
conservative Black hating, violence promoting, dangerous Soros funded extremist
group of haters,”
Mort Klein has no tactical
sense. He doesn’t know when to shut up.
His colleagues know that now is not the time to attack BLM, not least because
it will damage the reputation of Israel in the eyes of Jewish youth who are
already cynical about Israel, witness the growth of groups like Jewish
Voice for Peace and Ifnotnow.
That and only that is the reason why
other Zionist groups have called
for the expulsion of the ZOA from the CPMAJO. The Times of Israel reported
that the
Tweet by Mort
Klein vilifying Black Lives Matter seen as galvanizing liberal support to
remove Zionist Organization of America from Conference of Presidents
We should
be under no illusions that there is any major difference of principle between
Mort Klein and Diane Lob and her supporters.
Israel Hayom and Conspiracy Theories
The
Zionists have been working overtime to blunt and subvert the message of BLM.
According to Sheldon Adelson’s Israel
Hayom what is happening is Co-opting
Black Lives Matter to target Israel. This is up with all those other
conspiracy theories. We are told that
‘Efforts to link police brutality
in the United States with the Israel Defense Forces maintaining security
against Palestinian attacks have flooded the internet.
If it wasn’t for White people
manipulating Black Lives Matter they would never have worked out for themselves
that Israel has been training US police forces into becoming even more deadly
than they already are. This kind of conspiracy theory is strangely reminiscent
of the theory that Jews manipulate Blacks and Muslims in order to destroy the
White nations. It goes by the name Replacement
Theory.
Groups on the far-Right and far-Left,
including pro-Palestinian organizations with links to terrorism, have been
engaged in a campaign to co-opt the Black Lives Matter movement to target and
delegitimize Israel.
"The cynical use of the Black
Lives Matter by groups backed and controlled by foreign terror movements is
nothing less than a repeat of the many other times that terror groups have used
human shields to push their violence and hate," Mark Greendorfer,
president of the Zachor Legal Group, told JNS.
A "civil-rights movement (Black
Lives Matter) has been hijacked by extremists to push an agenda focused on
promoting hate, in the form of anti-Semitism, rather than seeking
justice," he said.
Exchanging
Support for Israel for Support for BLM
Back in April 2016 Sam Kestenbaum explained
that the problem
was ‘a ‘new platform’ [the
link doesn’t work now!]of BLM ‘that describes Israel as an “apartheid state”
committing “genocide” against the Palestinian people’.’ Kestenbaum
explained
that since the beginning of BLM in 2013, in the wake of the Police murder of
Michael Brown
‘Jewish
groups across the country have struggled to strike the right tone in their
responses to the movement. Activists aligned with Black Lives Matter have
frequently visited the occupied Palestinian West Bank in what some call
“solidarity tours,” as recently as July 30
Henn Mazzig in When Jews Attack Black Lives Matter, It Only
Fuels Anti-Semitismwrote
that Zionists who believe that they can trade off support for Israel in
exchange for support for BLM is not working:
The message black people are
getting today from some in the Jewish community is that they think black lives
don’t matter. Would you think otherwise if a video emerged of a Jew being
choked to death by a cop and non-Jews said they couldn’t support our movement
because, say, the Anti-Defamation League said something they don’t like? ...
Why were these (3) women able to
impart their anti-Israel policies on the Black Lives Matter platform? They were
deeply committed to the movement. Pro-Israel voices, like the ones in my
replies, were not.
Attacking Black Lives Matter only
fuels anti-Semitism [i.e. anti-Zionism], making it easier to paint Jews as
racists...
Although countless Jews and
Zionists support Black Lives Matter... these voices railing against the
movement undo some of that unifying work. Another was Rachel Gilmer of Dream
Defenders, a Jewish anti-Zionist.
If you want to change Black Lives
Matter Israel agenda, you need to show up for them. Because by showing up for
racial justice, we are actually showing up for ourselves....
When I posted Black Lives Matter
online, the responses from Jews in America were shocking.
Some started bombarding me with
replies that Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an anti-Israel cabal. That they are
not protestors but looters and criminals. ... A few people claimed it was all “George Soros’s doing.” I pointed out
that anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists like former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard
David Duke were employing the same rhetoric. One American Jew replied, “Well,
he is right about Soros.”
There is a
serious debate taking place in the Zionist movement in the United States which sees
the antics of those like Mort Klein as damaging support for Israel. Behind
closed doors they agree with most of what he says. Their disagreement is with
the way he says it.
Rabbi Ari
Hart, of the Bayit Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, wrote on his public Facebook
page that he was “struggling with
#BlackLivesMatter but I believe black lives matter,”
Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council issued a statement
“We cannot and will not align ourselves with
organizations that falsely and maliciously assert that Israel is committing
‘genocide.We reject participation in any coalition that seeks to isolate and
demonize Israel.”
The platform of the “Movement for Black Lives,” was
BLM’s “first comprehensive document”. The
section on foreign policy (“Invest-Divest”) criticizes American military aid to
Israel. Israel is
“a
state that practices systematic discrimination and has maintained a military
occupation of Palestine for decades,”
It calls on activists to “build invest/divestment campaigns” to end “US Aid to Israel’s military industrial complex” and credits Adalah, an advocacy group for Arab rights,
among its “authors & contributors.”
‘Right-wing Jewish groups, including the
Zionist Organization of America have condemned Black Lives Matter since the
movement’s early days.’
The Anti-Defamation League
Ha’aretz quotes
the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt as saying that racial justice for African
Americans is one of “the struggles of our
time.”
This is the purest hypocrisy. It is a wonder that
Greenblatt’s nose isn’t six foot long! In August 2016 the Tablet quoted
Greenblatt as saying of BLM’s Platform that:
it’s repellent and completely inaccurate to label
Israel’s policy as “genocide.” (it) completely ignores incitement and violence
perpetrated against Israelis by some Palestinians, including terror inside the
country and rocket attacks lobbed from Gaza.
The article also informed readers that ‘The ADL’s extensive material on Black Lives Matter, including school
lesson plans, has now been quietly removed from its website.
Liberal Zionist Peter Beinart described
BLM’s Platform as ‘stupid’ for talking of Israeli genocide. BLM’s Platform did
not go over well with the what The Tablet called ‘some of Black Lives Matter’s hitherto staunch progressive allies.’
Greenblatt tweeted that ‘We
need justice for everyone who has been a victim of racist policing &
violence.’ Which sounds very much like ‘All Lives Matter’ the racist response
to the specific violence against Black people.
‘An influx of
millions of Palestinians into Israel would pose a threat to its national
security and upset the country’s demographic makeup.’
Isn’t that
Trump’s agenda? Sure he puts it a bit
more crudely, in terms of Mexican rapists and shithole countries in Africa, but
isn’t he too trying to preserve American culture and demographic make-up?
The Tablet had
nothing to say about the Occupation, land confiscation, the ethnic cleansing of
Jerusalem etc. Even liberal Zionist groups are PEPs – Progressive Except for
Palestine.
Unbelievably the Zionist Tablet gives a soft-ball interview to America's leading academic holocaust denier, Kevin MacDonald
The Tablet may
lambast the ‘bigotry’ of BLM but it’s not above indulging in some of its
own. Quite amazingly in its current
issue it contains a full length interview with Professor Kevin MacDonald,
the foremost academic supporter of White nationalism and Holocaust denial in
the USA. As the introduction to the interview explains:
The specifics of the Jewish [evolutionary] strategy on American soil...
include encouraging mass immigration and promoting cultural relativism and
multiculturalism—which he describes as ideological tools that Jews use to
fracture the organic cohesion of their white Christian host culture.
MacDonald’s theories and writing inspired the slogan “the Jews will not replace us” which energized the 2017 “Unite the
Right” rally in Charlottesville.
In other
words Jews act as one and their behaviour is genetically and biologically
programmed. Stripped of its academic jargon this rhetoric is part of the old
Nazi idea that Jews subvert the Gentile nations in order to rule over them. Yet
a prominent Zionist journal prints an interview with an open neo-Nazi.
The ADL and Spying for Apartheid South Africa
We should
not forget the lawsuit begun in 1992 accusing
the ADL of spying on behalf of the Apartheid regime in South Africa (not
Israel!). It was settled for $178,000.
Israel was then an ally of South
Africa's white- supremacist government, and the ADL's chief
intelligence-gatherer in the Bay Area, Roy
Bullock, later admitted he was being paid by South Africa.
The suit claimed that the ADL was
working to suppress domestic criticism of Israel by compiling dossiers that it
shared with police, the Israeli government and its own supporters. The ADL said
it was legally monitoring hate groups and political extremists.
After Bullock and a San Francisco
police inspector were seen talking to South African agents in 1992 police
seized more than 10,000 files from the two men and ADL offices in San Francisco
and Los Angeles. See: Jewish
defense group settles S.F. spying suit
ADL
and Starbucks
The balancing act that ADL perform,
training the US Police whilst professing horror at the death of Black men at
their hands fools noone. When Starbucks staff called the Police because two
Black men were ‘loitering’
in their coffee house it provoked national outrage.
Starbucks set aside a day when their
premises were closed for ‘anti-bias training.
Who was called upon to provide it?
The ADL! This caused an uproar among
Black and left-wing activists. As a result Starbucks were
forced to drop the ADL from their training plans.
Considering the fact that Jews are, by far, the most
prominent targets of hate crimes in America these days, giving in to
anti-Semites and removing the ADL from a diversity training initiative of a
major American corporation is particularly heinous.
America’s
Jews are obviously not the ‘most
prominent targets’ of racist attacks. Secondly calling BLM ‘anti-Semites’ betrays
the real agenda.
Leibovitz blamed the decision on
Tamika Mallory, ‘a leader of the Women’s
March and vocal supporter of Louis Farrakhan’ who tweeted
that the ADL was an organization dedicated to “constantly attacking black and brown people.” Another example of
Zionist guilt-by-association which avoids what she said. Whether Tamika is or
is not a member of the Nation of Islam is neither here nor there.
ADL and Police Training
US police forces have been trained courtesy
of the ADL in the latest techniques of repression, including neck holds.
Israel’s police have so much more ‘on
hands’ or ‘on neck’ experience of
repression. In
Partnering with Law Enforcement the ADL boast
that
ADL works with every major
federal, state and local law enforcement agency, from the Federal Bureau
of Investigation to major city police departments, state police, highway
patrol and sheriffs’ departments. Over the past decade, we have trained 150,000
law enforcement personnel—at no cost to taxpayers. This work is designed to
protect people and communities from hate, extremism and terrorism.
The
‘problem’ that the Zionists faced was described in 2017 in a leaked
report written by the ADL and the Reut Institute.
It bemoaned how campaigners had successfully been
able
to frame the Palestinian struggle against Israel as part of the struggle of
other disempowered minorities, such as African Americans.
The report warned that
intersectionality “undermines Jewish
communities’ agendas, including support for the State of Israel.” The
Israel lobby and Zionist hasbara were happy with identity politics because it
was simple to define Jewishness in terms of Zionism and Israel. Jews were just
one more equally oppressed group.
But intersectionality asked more
difficult questions such as where the source of inequality comes from. Intersectionality
argued that oppression is not one dimensional. American Jews don’t suffer from
police violence, disproportionate imprisonment or economic discrimination. To
say that being Jewish is equivalent of being Black is to negate the oppression
of the latter. Oppression has many causes – economic, class, race, imperialism
etc.
Starmer’s
Racist Hypocrisy
Was there anything more sickening
than seeing Starmer and Rayner taking a knee in an empty conference room, on a
plush carpet? This is the same Starmer who is busy expelling anyone ‘guilty’ of
opposing Israeli Apartheid or Zionism.
Starmer’s racist witch-hunt is
netting hundreds of Black and Jewish members of the Labour Party. All in the
service of Tel Aviv and Netanyahu’s coalition with the Israeli Labor Party.
Because the organisation driving the witch-hunt is none other than the British
wing of the almost dead ILP, the Jewish
Labour Movement.
Instead of taking the knee,
Keir Starmer should be expelling BLM members for supporting BDS and calling
Israel a Genocidal, Apartheid State!
Black members of the Labour Party understand
Starmer’s hypocrisy which is why he is expelling so many of them. Most are not
collaborators like the David
Lammy, who abstained in the vote on the ‘hostile environment’ 2014
Immigration Act, as did all but one of Labour’s useless Black MPs. Lammy is a paid up supporterof Labour Friends of Israel.
In Black
lives do not matter in IsraelDavid Sheen wrote of how, on March
17, one of Israel's two chief rabbis, Yitzhak Yosef, called black people "monkeys" and
the Hebrew equivalent of the N-word in his weekly sermon. He said the same two
years previously that all non-Jews - Africans, Arabs, or otherwise - could only
live in Israel if they agree to serve the country's Jewish population.
Israel's other chief rabbi,
Yisrael Lau, used the N-word to describe Black athletes on his very
first day in office in July 2013. In 2010 dozens of Israeli rabbis, led by
Safed’s Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, a paid official of the Israeli state,
issued an edict forbidding Jews to rent their homes to non-Jews. As Ha'aretz explained:
Dozens
of Israel's municipal chief rabbis have signed on to a new religious ruling
that would forbid the rental of homes to gentiles in a move particularly aimed
against Arabs
When Lammy and Starmer support Israel
and demonise its opponents as ‘anti-Semitic’ they are actively supporting this
racism. Below are extracts from an important article
by Ramzy Baroud on the role of Israel in militarizing the United States police.
The
militarization of the US police and its use of deadly violence against
suspected petty criminals, or even non criminals, is a relatively new
phenomenon that has been largely imported from Israel.
Israeli torture
tactics, including the infamous ‘Palestinian Chair’, became the crown jewel of
the American military’s systematic violence used in America’s immoral wars from
Iraq to Afghanistan, to elsewhere.
Writing in the
Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2016, Rachel Stroumsa argued
that the ‘Palestinian Chair’ is “but one
of many examples of ties and seepages between the security practices of Israel
and America,” adding that “the CIA
explicitly justified its use of torture in depositions to the Senate
Intelligence Committee by citing High Court of Justice rulings.”
The fact that
thousands of American police officers have been trained by Israelis, thus the
burgeoning of violent military-like tactics used against ordinary Americans, is
only one link in a long chain of ‘deadly
exchanges’ between the two countries.
The US-Israel Military
Relationship and the US-Mexico Border
The horrific impacts of border
militarization and the practices of racist agencies like Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) on border communities,
immigrants, and people of color across the US have been well documented for
years.
Feeding into US imperialist policy,
Israel has been an important partner and supporter of the militarization of the
border and border agencies in a number of ways:
The growing Israeli role in
shaping the American security state allowed Israel to push its political
priorities past its traditional stronghold over the US Congress to individual
states and, eventually, to city councils across the country
NEW YORK (JTA) — The co-author of the Black Lives
Matter platform passage accusing Israel of “genocide” defended the term, saying
Israel’s actions fit in its wider definition.
Ben Ndugga-Kabuye co-authored the statement along with
Rachel Gilmer, the former board member of a Zionist youth group. Ndugga-Kabuye
told JTA he understood why Jewish groups disagree with the statement, but was
perplexed that it has received so much attention.
He compared it with the accusations of genocide that
black activists have leveled at the United States and called the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict one of many international conflicts US black
activists feel connected to.
“The way we
look at it is, we take strong stances,” Ndugga-Kabuye, a New York City
organizer for the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, told JTA. “The demand
we’re making is we’re against the US continuing funding and military aid to the
government of Israel. These are all things that are going to be in debate.”
The platform, released August 2 by The Movement for
Black Lives coalition, is largely a statement of the goals of a movement that
coalesced around police violence directed against black people in the United
States, mass incarceration of African-Americans and other domestic issues.
But it also calls for ending US military aid to Israel
and accuses Israel of being an apartheid state. The platform includes a link to
a website promoting the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel called
BDS.
“The
US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel
and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people”
reads the “Invest/Divest” section of “A Vision for Black Lives.”
A string of Jewish organizations, from the
Anti-Defamation League to the Reform movement and National Council of Jewish
Women, has condemned the genocide and apartheid language as well as the BDS
endorsement. T’ruah, a rabbis’ human rights group that opposes Israel’s West
Bank occupation, also criticized the document.
Most of the organizations took pains to note that they
are sympathetic to other parts of the platform, many of which jibe with liberal
Jewish positions on the criminal justice system, economic justice and
immigration.
“While
we are deeply concerned about the ongoing violence and the human rights
violations directed at both Israelis and Palestinians, we believe the terms
genocide and apartheid are inaccurate and inappropriate to describe the
situation,”
NCJW wrote in a statement. “Further, BDS is too often used to de-legitimize Israel’s right to
exist.”
Jewish Voice for Peace, which supports BDS, was the rare Jewish group
that endorsed the platform in its entirety.
On Tues., Dec. 15, more than
300 Jewish activists in Boston marched for the Black Lives Matter movement,
including members of Jewish Voice for Peace (photo credit: Ignacio
Laguarda/Wicked Local)
Ndugga-Kabuye said state actions don’t need to rise to
the level of the Holocaust or other historical genocides to deserve the term,
which he said could connote unjust state killing of a disadvantaged group. He
compared his usage of the word to We Charge Genocide, a group that opposes
police violence in Chicago.
“We’re talking about a
structure of violent deaths that are state sanctioned, that are without
accountability, and that are ongoing,”
he told JTA.
“We
can say this is what’s happening in Palestine and not equate it with what’s
happening in South America. It doesn’t say it’s the same number of people being
killed or the [same] manner of people being killed.”